User Experience Convergence between Personal/ and Industrial is Accelerating

Every day you walk around plants and operational centers and you see a growing acceptance of “bring my own device” and use of these personal devices in the day to day industrial life. This is just natural, and good, but it is not just the devices that come into play it is the expectation of the similar user experience, and applications.

The next generation workforce has grown up as digital aware, and with the expectation to always be connected and able to access information and people. Sharing is a natural act, and texting, the "now " situation is expected. But as the personal world becomes totally wearable and in the "Now", when you on the plant, doing your jobs, you expect the same interaction, and experience.

It is not the industrial user experience that will dominate it is the personal one coming into the industrial experience. The industrial solutions and interfaces will evolve to leverage the same:

·       Applications

·       Sharing

·       Access

·       Immediate awareness

·       Location awareness

The day in the life of a worker on a plant will not be in a control room, or human machine interface, to be more responsive the worker will adopt the wearable devices, and expect the industrial information, and interaction to mimic the personal one but in the industrial context.

The challenge comes in developing the industrial user experience in a way that interact with the existing industrial back end applications, but enabling the collaborative experience, and a user to transverse across a series of devices and experiences to execute a job. Common information, tasks and actions will be required to be performed from each of the devices in a industrially safe and reliable way.

This evolution is happening at an accelerated pace. The diagram below illustrates the convergence.